Such methods are employed to provide at least one person when an alarm is triggered to eliminate the event triggering the alarm, e.g., to call a member of the health care staff to a patient. It is a challenge in this connection that a person shall be provided as quickly as possible, without the persons developing alarm fatigue due to constant alarms, which they cannot look after or which has already been taken care of by other persons.
It is known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 7,439,856 B2 that an alarm can be sent to persons by means of a central alarm server step by step according to an escalation level plan by means of activating a warning device until a person takes care of the alarm event in question. The escalation level plan classifies the persons according to patient name, patient location, medical condition and reason for alarm for the patient, the availability of additional persons and their combinations. A certain person or group of persons is then sent an alarm first and persons who are less qualified are subsequently sent an alarm step by step if the aforementioned persons to whom an alarm has been sent do not take care of the alarm event.
It is disadvantageous here that the entire escalation is performed by the alarm server. However, a permanent connection to the warning devices is necessary for this, because these warning devices must be able to be reached by the server at any time at the moment of sending an alarm. However, precisely hospitals cover a large area and at times they are also shielded against radiation. Therefore, it frequently happens that the next warning device in the escalation cannot be reached precisely when an alarm is being sent to it. Nevertheless, the person assigned to the warning device is actually ready at this moment to take care of the alarm event. However, due to this person not being able to be reached, the next person in the escalation is sent an alarm, who can process the alarm event less efficiently, for example, because she must walk a longer distance or is less qualified.